Discourses Concerning Government Quotes

“God helps those who help themselves.”
― Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government

“If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.”
― Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government

“A well-governed state is as fruitful to all good purposes, as the seven-headed serpent is said to have been in evil; when one head is cut off, many rise up in the place of it. Good order being once established, makes good men...”
― Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government

“He that builds a city, and does not intend it should increase, commits as great an absurdity, as if he should desire his child might ever continue under the same weakness in which he is born. If it do not grow, it must pine and perish; for in this world nothing is permanent; that which does not grow better will grow worse.”
― Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government

“The highest places are always slippery: Men's eyes dazzle when they are carried up to them; and falls from them are mortal. Few kings or tyrants, says Juvenal, go down to the grave in peace...”
― Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government

“[Coriolanus'] violence and pride overbalanced his services; and he that would submit to no law, was justly driven out from the society which could subsist only by law.”
― Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government

“No man can justly impose anything upon those who owe him nothing. . . . Whosoever therefore . . . grounds his pretensions of right upon usurpation and tyranny, declares himself to be, like Nimrod, a usurper and a tyrant, that is an enemy to God and man, and to have no right at all.”
― Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government